Class, Gender, and Interest in

Based on a survey of junior college and polytechnic students in Singapore, this article argues that there is a gender gap concerning sustainable interest in science. In Singapore, both male and female students perform well in science subjects in the high school leaving ex-amination, but by the time they begin their course of studies in the junior colleges and polytechnics, the fe-male students do not retain interest in science. The re-lationship between class as well as parental educa-tional background and interest in science is not very strong. The disadvantages set by the class background are to some extent mitigated by the school system, which takes a meritocratic and thus somewhat perfor-mance-based egalitarian approach. Recommenda-tions are made to help motivate female students to take an interest in science such as presentation of the role models of female scientists. However, the main target ought to be changes in the culture that promote more gender equality. The relationship between gender and science pres-ents a familiar picture across cultures. The world of science continues to be dominated by men. Women are still underrepresented in the fields of science and tech-nology. In the United States, fewer than 10 % of all engineers and only about 27 % of computer scientists and programmers are women (The Associated Press, 2000). However, in the highly industrialized countries, a new self-image of women often promoted by femi-nism has been able to bring about few changes. Schiebinger (2000) argues, “Who could have pre-dicted just a decade ago that the chief scientist at NASA would be a women or that the president of the foremost association of Japanese physicists would be a woman? ” (p. 1171). Although there are signs that the traditional male dominance in science is weakening, the pattern remains by and large stable in the rest of the world. The absence of women in the fields of scienc